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WASHINGTON AS A 
CITIZEN 



AN ADDRESS BY 

HON. DAVID JAYNE HILL 

BEFORE 

THE WASHINGTON ASSOCIATION 
OF NEW JERSEY 

Witk Greeting Li, ALFRED ELMER MILLS, President, 
and Proceedings in tlie Celebration 

AT WASHINGTON'S HEADQUARTERS | 

IN MORRISTOWN, N. J. 
ON FEBRUARY 22, 1922 



^^1iT7W;^R': 



«x^t>svir7Svir7Sviri«virrsviri«(it)Svit7SYir)«vi;ysv}r/^ 



r '^ L1W.RY OF CONGKlrStt 
RECEIVED 

I OCT 171922 

* i:.OCUMl£NTS i'^'V. 






ADDRESS 

Before tlie Members of tlie 

WASHINGTON ASSOCIATION OF NEW JERSEY 



The meeting was called to order by President Alfred 
Elmer Mills. 

After the singing- of the National Anthem, America, Presi- 
dent Mills said : 
GENTLEMEN OF THE WASHINGTON ASSOCIATION: 

It is mighty nice to have the privilege of extending words 
of welcome to you and your guests once more, although I am 
sorry to displace Brother Cutler through whom I sent you a 
vicarious greeting last year. 

Our dear old president Mr. Roberts once suggested that 
we should have a different presiding officer each year so that 
each member could preside in turn but as it would take about 
500 years to give all our members a chance, and as each mem- 
ber insisted upon presiding during the first hundred years the 
plan was abandoned and today I must consider myself a sort 
of composit chairman representing you all. 

I may be mistaken in my conclusion but you look just as 
happy as in the good old days when you decided that Dr. Pier- 
son and I knew nothing about making strong punch. 

If John Barleycorn had not misbehaved and become an 
extremist we might have had our punch today. 

That it is dangerous to be an extremist is illustrated by 
an epitaph which I saw when down South last winter. It was 
this — 



"Ma loved Pa 

Pa loved women 

Ma caught Pa 

With some in swimmin 

Here lies Pa" 

Your Association is, as usual, in excellent condition not- 
withstanding it has had to grapple with that Demon called 
"High Cost of Living:" 

Probably most of us are acquainted with that same Demon 
and can sympathize with the Southern darkey who after he 
had lost his fourth wife had a call from his Pastor. 

In response to the Pastor's solicitous inquiry as to how he 
felt he replied "I fell like I was in the hands of an all-wise 
and unscrupulous providence." 

With the passing of the years we are obliged to face the 
sad fact that many of our best beloved friends are no longer 
with us. 

During 1921 our death roll was heavy. 

\mong those who have gone is our good Vice President. 
Dr. Henry A. Henriques, whose genial presence did so much 
to make our meetings a success. 

Since our gathering of a year ago the chaotic situation 
prevailing in many parts of the world has made us ap- 
preciats the fact that the situation here, bad as it is, might 
be much worse. 

Momentous events are taking place. 

The leading nations are trying to make this a safe and a 
better world, as is evidenced by the recent disarmament con- 
ference at Washington which Lloyd George, Prime Minister of 
England, referred to a couple of weeks ago, as "one of the 
greatest achievements in the history of the world." 

But after all, in the last analysis, the question whether 
the future is to bring peace and prosperity to the peoples of 
the earth depends largely upon its citizens. 

Good citizenship is absolutely essential to the solution of 
our problems and no better way to draw inspiration of that 
character can be found than in the study of the great Wash- 
ington. 



Our speaker today is one of America's leading citizens. 

His wide learning-, great ability and statesmanlike quali- 
ties have brought him distinction as a Man of Letters, as His- 
torian, as College President, as Minister to Switzerland, as 
Minister to the Netherlands, as Ambassador to Germany and in 
numerous other ways. 

I take great pleasure in introducing the Hon. David Jayne 
Hill, whose subject is "Washington as a Citizen." 



"WASHINGTON AS A CITIZEN" 
AN ADDRESS BY HON. DAVID JAYNE HILL 

Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen of the Association: Driving 
over from Newark yesterday to Morristown, there kept run- 
ning through my mind some words of Sir William Hamilton: 
"On earth there is nothing great but man; in man there is 
nothing great but mind." Whether the occurrence to my 
thought of those words was owing to the companionship of 
Judge Mills, or my visit to the Washington Association of New 
Jersey at Morristown, I am not quite sure. But I am certain of 
this: that in all the great historic movements of the world, in 
religion, in philosophy and in government, we are led back in 
our thought to some great person, whose genius or character 
or action has given a new direction or a new impetus to the 
development of man. Among those who, by their thought 
and conduct, have created great periods in the form or the pur- 
pose of government, none will deny a pre-eminent place to 
Washington. A soldier, a statesman and a citizen, he stands 
out in the bright galaxy of wise and heroic men who fought in 
the American War for Independence and founded our American 
system of constitutional government, as the bright particular 
star. 

This distinction has been recognized not only by our own 
countrymen, who gather in every part of the nation on this 
day to celebrate the anniversary of his birth, but, for different 
reasons, no doubt, in many other countries. Even in England, 
the arch-rebel of 1776 is now claimed as a great Englishman. 
The Sulgrave Manor in Northamptonshire, an old monastic 
foundation once owned and occupied as a residence for four 
generations by a branch of the Washington family, has been 
purchased, fitted up with ancient furniture and. in the name 
of George Washington, made the seat of a cult of Anglo-Ameri- 
can friendship. Less than a year ago, a bust of Washington, 
a replica of Houdon's famous original, has been placed in a 
crypt of St. Paul's, in London, and near the busts of Nelson 
and Wellington ; and a statue, presented by Virginia, has been 
erected in that "parterre of heroes", Trafalgar Square, where, 

6 



ADDRESS OF HON. DAVID JAYNE HILL 7 

unhappily, it is dwarfed by its colossal surroundings. This 
fact has led the Marquess of Crewe, in a recent article to 
remark : "It would perhaps be an exaggeration to say of him, 
as was said of the effigies of Brutus and Cassius, missing 
from the Roman processions, that his figure outshines all others 
by its absence; but if the statue could be transferred from 
Trafalgar Square to Westminster Abbey, a gap would be filled, 
and many minds would be profoundly gratified.'* 

In our own country, with uninterrupted expressions of 
veneration, we have recalled and permanently perpetuated the 
memories that cling round the hallowed places, hallowed for all 
time by the sojourn and activities of Washington; and it is 
a great privilege, gentlemen, to ccme to this spot, twice the 
headquarters of the Commander-in-Chief of our Revolutionary 
Army, where the spirit of patriotism has singularly remained 
a dominant note in the life of this community. 

I do not know that the imagination has done for Mor- 
ristown all that it has done for Mount Vernon. There, a cus- 
todian, long in service, sees or believes he sees, in the deepen- 
ing shades of evening, th majestic figure of the General, clad in 
his great blue mantle, walking amidst the trees and meditating 
upon the fate of the nation that he loved. Sometimes, with 
head erect, alert and vigorous with vivacity, he seems to this 
undoubting observer, to rejoice in some national event of 
which he appears to have knowledge. At other times, with an 
air of dejection, he seems like one bearing a heavy burden of 
sorrow, and appears to be filled with doubt and apprehension, 
as with bowed head and hesitating steps he moves down the 
distant vista and vanishes from view. 

Now, if one could share this privilege of visualization, it 
would be interesting, indeed, to watch for the mysterious smile 
that must pass over his countenance, when visiting delega- 
tions come, at the bidding of crowded heads, to plant trees in 
the grounds of Mount Vernon, or to place garlands at the iron 
gate of the plain brick vault. What a host they are, these pil- 
grims of the Old World, whose ancestors looked down upon 
ours as rebels, fanatics, and hopeless idealists, who actually 
believed in the capacity of ordinary men to govern themselves, 



8 ADDRESS OF HON. DAVID JAYNE HILL 

and to build a habitation of freedom for posterity which in- 
ternal dissension and the smiting hand of power could not 
destroy ! 

And now, why is it not destroyed? What guards it, to- 
day, from destruction, this great edifice of free, constitutional 
government in which we live? What is it, but the faith and 
virtue of the citizens of the Republic? And what gives vigor 
to their minds, and fidelity to their hearts, if not the great 
principles, — ^^the distinctive and the often combatted principles 
— upon which the American Republic was founded? 

I turn then, today, to a theme which, in all the discourses 
about Washington, and in all the acts of commemoration in 
honor of him, I have never heard distinctly emphasized, — 
Washington as a Citizen; not the great soldier, not the great 
statesman, not the great President, but that which every one 
of us by our own will may be, without the distinction or the 
emoluments of public office, simply yet grandly, an American 
Citizen. 

There are two methods by which we may approach this 
theme. One is by setting up an ideal standard of citizenship, 
r. construction of the mind, as we may conceive or imagine it, 
and then to compare the conduct of Washington with that 
ideal. The other is, without any theory or any prejudice or 
any standard, simply to state objectively what Washington as 
a citizen did or said, leaving to each one's judgment the con- 
clusion to be drawn from the contemplation of the picture thus 
presented to the mind; and it is this latter method which I 
shall now briefly apply. 

If we accept Washington's testimony, the happiest hours 
of his existence were those passed in the tranquil seclusion 
which, in those days of difficult transportation, really meant 
almost perfect isolation on his estate at Mount Vernon. As a 
young man, he had defended the western frontier against the 
incursions of the French and the Indians, and in the State of 
Virginia he held a high military position; but he was not a 
lover of fighting and never resorted to warlike methods or 
action without a sufficient and reasonable cause. He was a 
Ipver of peace and happiest in tranquility. 



ADDRESS OF HON. DAVID JAYNE HILL 9 

For political life, in its ordinary sense, he had no taste 
whatever. Not specially endowed with the gift of ready 
speech, he had no aspiration to be known as an orator, and was 
never known as one. He set little value upon the applause of 
public assemblies. He was long a member of the Virginia 
House of Burgesses, and also, from the beginning, of the Con- 
tinental Congress; but his great influence in these bodies was 
owing far less to his public utterances than to the confidence 
in his wisdom as a judicious adviser. 

It was in no spirit of bravado or of personal ambition that 
Washington threw his whole being into the cause of the War 
for Independence. No truthful revision of history — ^and men 
are now much engaged in revising history — can ever accept a 
pretense that he could, under any circumstances, have favored 
an indefinite continuance of colonial dependence in relation 
to the mother-country, or that any other relation than 
that of subordination would, at that time, have been 
satisfactory to any political party in England. There was, 
from the continental character of the American colonies, an 
utter impossibility, wholly apart from that of submitting to 
foreign dominion, either by a King or by a Parliament, that a 
nation composed of free men should be ruled from an island 
whose only possibility of augmented power consisted in as- 
serting it over distant quarters of the globe. The very ex- 
pression "Continental Congress'' conveyed, and was intended to 
convey, a revolt against an imperial regime in which, if Ameri- 
ca was to play in it any role at all, it must necessarily be one of 
perpetual subordination on the part of a country destined by 
its nature and its possibilities to become greater 
and greater, to one whose claim to rule over it rested upon an 
indefensible moral and legal claim to supremacy. Washington 
saw this. He saw it clearly, and was, therefore, a convinced 
believer in immediate American Independence, for which an 
urgent cause was given by a spirit of arbitrary domination 
which, if triumphant, would have sealed the fate of the colon- 
ies for decades, if not for centuries, to come. At the second 
Continental Congress, therefore, he appeared in his uniform 
as a Virginia colonel and wrote to a friend in England: "The 



10 ADDRESS OF HON. DAVID JAYNE HILL 

peaceful plains of America are either to be drenched with 
blood or inhabited by slaves.? That is strong language, gentle- 
men. " '^'I'^lJ 

Now, happily, today, through participation in a common 
cause and a profound change in public sentiment, on both sides 
of the Atlantic, we stand in better relations with the nation 
against which Washington fought. But we shall gain noth- 
ing in friendship with any people by an attempt to denature 
history. The breach with England was far more than a schism 
between political parties of the same people, as now many try 
to represent it ; and it is a perversion of the truth to claim that 
Washington, the first real out-and-out American, an American 
for seven years, an American in the midst of dreadful suffer- 
ings, as the traditions of this town tell you, was really only a 
disgruntled colonial, or at heart just an ordinary Englishman, 
or an Englishman like Conway, or Barre, or Pitt, who defended 
America in Parliament at that time. Pitt's thesis was this, — 
mark it well — that "the distinction beween legislation and tax- 
ation is necessary to liberty." Since only the Commons have 
power to vote taxes, and the Americans are not represented in 
Parliament, he argues, there exists no right in Parliament to 
tax the Americans; and yet, he affirms, the Americans, 
being subjects of Great Britain, though not taxable by the 
British House of Commons, are subject to the combined legis- 
lation of the Commons, the Lords, and the Crown, which are 
equally legislative bodies, to which all British "subjects" must 
submit. 

Now, Washington's thesis was very different. It was, 
that the American people were, and of right ought to be, a 
self-governing people, who owed no allegiance to the Crown 
and the Lords of England that was not perfectly voluntary, 
and that these had no rightful authority to legislate for them. 
Government — this was Washington's thesis — government 
should be representative, and the American colonists were no 
more truly represented by the Crown or the Lords of England 
than they were in the Commons. They had not chosen them. 
That was Washington's thesis. 

Now, it is time that we should realize that there was, and 



ADDRESS OF HON. DAVID JAYNE HILL 11 

is, a great gulf between the British and the American theories 
of government. You will not accuse me of making any assault 
upon British imperialism, I am sure, when I point out this 
difference; but it would involve a confusion of thought to 
affirm that there is no essential difference, or to assume that 
Washington was not aware of it, when it was the mainspring 
and justification of all his years of combat and sacrifice and 
desperate struggle. 

Honest international amity at present, based on reason, 
interest, and growth of enlightenment, — very sure and true 
foundations for international amity, an amity which we should 
earnestly cultivate as far as possible — does not require to be 
strengthened on our part by an extenuation of the past, or by 
an endeavor, in circumstances which call for a change in policy, 
to represent that, in some mystical manner, there was no dis- 
union or hard feeling, and that amity has always existed. 

Right-minded men do well to forgive dead generations for 
a hostility that no longer exists, upon the assurance and some 
evidence that it is disavowed, and not likely to be repeated; 
but an effort to efface and extinguish a conflict of principles 
by the Hegelian method of asserting that negation and affirma- 
tion are the same thing, when seen in their higher unity, is 
impossible to a sound intelligence and a conscientious loyalty to 
the truth. To apply the conclusion, you cannot honor Washing- 
ton, as you do honor him in your hearts and minds, unless you 
are ready to admit that the cause for which he imperilled his 
life, until it was triumphant, was in itself, and must stand 
forever, as a good cause, as a justified cause, and a cause which 
it would have been basely ignominious, as well as technically 
treasonable, with Benedict Arnold and Charles Lee, to have 
abandoned in the midst of the struggle. I cannot, therefore, 
listen with any patience to any American when he asserts, or 
implies, as I have heard it both asserted and implied, that it 
would have been better if the War for Independence had never 
occurred, and if we were, today, a part of the British Empire, 
now preferably referred to as the British Commonwealth. I 
should prefer to maintain the thesis, that it was the example 
of the American revolt that made possible the very idea of a 



12 ADDRESS OF HON. DAVID JAYNE HILL 

British Commonwealth, by exposing the futility of empire in 
its old historic sense. (Applause). 

We are today, as a nation, with very great prestige, reach- 
ing out the hand of friendship and offering the blessings and 
security of peace in the name of impartial justice to all the 
other peoples of the world. It is, gentlemen, a great historic 
moment, when it is a joy to be alive, and to be an American. 
(Applause). But if — let me say this — but if, as the price of 
it, and in return for international amity and understanding, I 
had to forget and renounce the glory of the American War for 
Independence, or to obscure its triumph by some wish for ab- 
sorption into some larger and wider relationship, I should wish 
that I had not lived to see this day. (Applause). 

The American Revolution was no immature fruit of poli- 
tical philosophy, no sudden plunge into the uncertainties of an 
untried freedom, no scheme of ambitious leaders to secure per- 
sonal advantage, but the clear and reasoned determination of 
the people, or of a large portion of the people to be rid, forever 
rid, of a relation of dependence and subordination that brought 
them no real protection and much humiliation. Needed laws 
were denied them, and their commerce and industries were 
repressed. Now, it was not against law that they were rebell- 
ing. Their revolt was made in the name of law. The protest 
of the colonies was not primarily against the tax, nor yet 
against the withholding of representation in the law-making 
body, but against the King's refusal to grant the colonies a 
government based on law. Read your Declaration of Indepen- 
dence again, and do not forget these passages. The first charge 
"submitted to a candid world," to use the language of the De- 
claration, is : "He has refused his assent to laws of immediate 
and pressing importance and necessary for the public good." 
That was the gravamen in that terrible indictment. It runs 
through the whole twelve subsequent accusations of misrule, 
ascending through the entire gamut of complaint with increas- 
ing intensity, declaring, among other things, "He has obstruc- 
ted the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws 
for establishing judiciary powers"; and ending with the climax, 
as if it were the very acme of governmental perversity: "he 



ADDRESS OF HON. DAVID JAYNE HILL 13 

has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign 
to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws, giving 
his assent to their pretended acts of legislation." The claim 
to law — read it again — the claim to law, as the most precious 
possession of citizenship, recurs at intervals throughout the re- 
mainder of the document. Three times, in the midst of the 
fourteen additional specifications of usurpation, the writer of 
the Declaration returns to his demand for unperverted law as 
the one central purpose of the document. (Applause). 

Throughout twelve years of public debate, which preceded 
the final act of separation, it was the conviction of great jurists, 
on both sides of the Atlantic, that resistance to the encroach- 
ments of the Crown and the Parliament was jiistified by all the 
traditions of English liberty. But who, in England, could, if 
disposed, resist those encroachments? The American colonists 
did resist them, and thereby they did a service for those tradi- 
tions which is not to be denied. They had taken a step in ad- 
vance of the mother-country, which did not dare to challenge 
the throne. Why? Because the throne was the strong bond 
of empire, as it is today. But the American colonists were ripe 
for independence. They had reached that maturity of political 
development, which, as Turgot said, entitled them to separate, 
as the ripened leaves of autumn fall from the parent tree. Al- 
ready they were capable of assuming those responsibilities in 
the family of nations which independence implies, and of main- 
taining that condition of public peace and private order without 
which no government has a right to exist. 

Now, it was a new citizenship, in no sense identical with 
that under which he was born, that inspired Washington, 
when he responded to the call from Massachusetts, where 
blood had already been shed, and under the old elm tree at 
Cambridge took the oath as Commander-in-Chief of the Con- 
tinental Army. 

If the General was the first military man of his time 
among the colonists, it was not in the spirit of a professional 
soldier that he assumed his duties, but as the citizen most 
fitted for his task. "If you speak of solid information and sound 
judgment," said Patrick Henry, "Colonel Washington is un- 



14 ADDRESS OF HON. DAVID JAYNE HILL 

doubtedly the greatest man upon the floor." Rising in his 
place, the chosen leader modestly thanked Congress for the 
honor it had bestowed upon him, declining the offer of com- 
pensation, and adding, in words which are worthy of perpetual 
remembrance, "I will keep an exact account of my expenses; 
those, I doubt not, will be discharged, and that is all I desire." 
No bonus for Washington! (Prolonged applause). No salary 
for Washington! (Applause). For Washington, the service 
of a citizen. 

Now, it was, in truth, for a conception of citizenship diflfer- 
ent from any that the world had known, that the war was 
fought. How faithful to it the great leader was, was shown 
when, in May, 1782, when the dilatory procedure of Congress — 
Congresses are so much alike — had created in the army a spirit 
of unrest and dissatisfaction that made the effort of the strug- 
gle seem almost barren of results. Looking to their General 
as the one firm, dependable reality in the discouraging situa- 
tion, an address was presented to him, recognizing him as the 
only means of saving the country, and intimating that he 
should assert himself as a controlling authority in civil affairs, 
to whose command the army would rally in support. 

Unquestionably, the address presented to Washington 
meant that, if he would consent to receive it, a crown was with- 
in his grasp ; and he himself regarded it as making this sugges- 
tion. His reply was a luminous expression of his character. 
"Be assured. Sir," he said, "no occurrence in the course of the 
war has given me more painful sensations than your informa- 
tion of there being such ideas existing in the army as you have 
expressed, and which I must view with abhorrence and repre- 
hend with severity. I am much at a loss to conceive what part 
of my conduct could have given encouragement to an address 
which seems to me big with the greatest mischiefs that can 
befall my country. Let me conjure you, Sir, then, if you have 
any regard for the country, concern for yourself or posterity, 
or respect for me, to banish these thoughts from your mind, 
and never communicate, as from yourself or anyone else, a sen- 
timent of the like nature." (Applause). 



ADDRESS OF HON. DAVID JAYNE HILL 15 

What was it that aroused in Washing^ton such indignation, 
such manifest resentment? 

I have recently, thinking of this occasion, read with deep- 
est interest, portions of Washington's voluminous correspon- 
dence, in which his most intimate thoughts find full expression. 
The impression left on my mind, which, if time permitted, 
could be fortified by extensive citations, is, that, although he 
was not, in the strict sense, a political philosopher, he had a 
very clear personal conception of what government should be, 
and of the citizen's personal relation to government. As it 
appeared to his mind, government should be founded wholly 
upon the nature of the citizen, — the nature of the citizen, as 
a moral personality responsible to his Creator for his conduct, 
endowed with freedom and the possessor of inherent rights, 
which government should never attempt, and never be permit- 
ted, to take away. In order that it might not do so, governments 
should never be imposed upon society by an arbitrary external 
force. Force is necessary to protect rights and to punish the 
violation of them, and so long as unjust men exist and possess 
power, such violation will occur; but the force that is to protect 
men should proceed from themselves, by their own free and 
publicly organized determination, should be limited in such a 
manner that it may not itself become a violator of inherent per- 
sonal rights, and should always be under their control. 

With such a conception of the citizen, and of government, 
Washington could no more permit himself to become a per- 
sonal dictator than he could accept the absolute authority of 
the King. 

He had challenged not only the authority of the King, but 
also the absolute pretensions of Parliament, in which the Col- 
onies were not even represented. In harmony with this con- 
ception, he could not even accept the authority of the Contin- 
ental Congress, or of the Legislature of Virginia, or of any 
other legislative body to govern absolutely, without restriction 
of any kind even by a majority, for the reason that there are 
in moral human personality inherent rights which majorities 
have never bestowed, and which, therefore, no legitimate au- 
thority can take away. 



16 ADDRESS OF HON. DAVID JAYNE HILL 

The basic idea of the whole revolutionary movement was, 
of course, personal liberty, — freedom to think, to act, to trade, 
to acquire and possess property without fear of expropriation, 
to develop one's faculties, to rise to any station in society for 
which one's native endowments or industry might fit him. 
It involved the sweeping away, the entire sweeping away, of 
all obstacles to the accomplishment of these ends. Rank and 
titles were to be abandoned. The individual was to count for 
what he was, subject to no attainder. 

The result in practice was not an unmixed blessing. Un- 
limited freedom menaced private rights and public order. The 
period from the conclusion of peace to the adoption of the Con- 
stitution, usually referred to as the "Critical Period", was, to 
intelligent minds, one of uncertainty and of gloom. 

During these four years, Washington was merely a pri- 
vate citizen in this critical period of our country's history. 
His time was largely devoted to a consideration of the interests 
of his country and in finding means of establishing the equili- 
brium between liberty and order. 

He did not need the results of his observation to convince 
him that unregulated democracy was a dangerous experiment. 
It involved both weakness and despotism; — weakness, because 
under it government had no cohesion or continuity of action, 
and was blown about by every wind of doctrine and every 
private interest; despotism, because apparent majorities were 
found always to be subject to a selfish control by interested 
minorities, regardless of the general good. 

The only bars to anarchy, at that time, were the Consti- 
tutions of the several States. These happily were founded on 
Bills of Rights, but their imperfections were numerous. The 
chief defect in the whole system was the absence of any truly 
national law or the authority to create or to execute it. The 
old confederation was a rope of sand. It was this that gave 
to Washington his chief concern; for, notwithstanding the 
struggle for government by law, the law was still non-existent. 

We cannot too frequently recall what was original and dis- 
tinctive in our system of federated representative government, 
in which every form of public authority was intended to be 



ADDRESS OF HON. DAVID JAYNE HILL 17 

deliberately limited by law, in the sense that law is the per- 
manent expression of the reasoned will of the people. 

First of all, that will, proceeding from a consciousness of 
moral personality and accountability, guards itself against the 
government it would create by according to government only 
definite and limited powers. It makes that charter a funda- 
mental law, by which the legality of all acts and statutes pro- 
posed by the National or the State legislatures is to be judged. 
It creates a National Judiciary to interpret and apply that law, 
and a National Executive to see that it is enforced. Thus, in 
the intention of the founders of our constitutional system, 
every element and authority of government was to be the crea- 
ture and the servant of law. 

In creating a government to protect their inherent rights 
as freemen, the framers of the Constitution made provision 
that the government they brought into being should not itself 
be able to destroy those rights. In the history of liberty, much 
has been said of Magna Charta, wrung from the hands of royal 
power by the barons at Runnymede, by which all were pro- 
tected in their persons and property, and could not be "out- 
lawed, or exiled, or otherwise destroyed, but by the lawful 
judgment of their peers, or the law of the land." But this 
concession permitted that anything might be done, if it was by 
the will of those who actually made the law, and they were far 
less than a majority of the people. The American Colonists 
believed — Washington believed — that there were things that 
should never be done, even by "the law of the land". There 
were, they thought, some rights so individual, so necessary to 
moral freedom, so important to preserve, that government 
had no right over them; and that was the distinctive note of 
our constitutional system. 

If time were at my disposal — but I must not weary you — 
1 should like to show, not only how the Constitution, often im- 
perfectly copied, has become a model for most of the free 
governments of the world, but also how it overcame the an- 
archy of the time in which it was established, when disconten- 
ted men were trying to make their selfish interests the law of 
the land, ordering State legislatures to abolish their debts, or 



18 ADDRESS OF HON. DAVID JAYNE HILL 

give them money by the free use of the printing press; when 
the courts were urged to hand down decisions in their interest, 
on pain of abolition; when idle or improvident men claimed 
the right to share equally in the goods of the more fortunate; 
and ambitious demagogues, then, as now and always, aided 
and promoted these demands as a means of obtaining public 
office. 

It is an old story, recurrent whenever and wherever demo- 
cracy has not had the wisdom to set bounds to the rapacity of 
men, through the powers of government. Had it not been for 
the high resolution that actuated the founders of constitutional 
government in America, our country would have eventually 
fallen into the economic condition in which Russia is today. 
There were men, at that time, who knew it. Republican gov- 
ernment, Hamilton said, would have been "disgraced and lost 
to mankind forever", and we should have fallen a prey to con- 
quest and subjection by the intrigues of European powers, ex- 
tending their eminent domain over us, as they have over 
Africa, and Asia, and Oceania, and over every available portion 
of the globe, where there was no power of defense. 

Much of the drift of recent years has been, distinctly, 
away from restraint on the powers of government. More and 
more, modern nations have tended to become economic organ- 
isms, in which there is, on the part of the people, increasing 
dependence for the means of living upon the authority, the be- 
nefactions, and the gratuities of the political State. Material- 
istic conceptions of the nature and origin of man, and of his 
social relations, have added emphasis to this dependence. Men 
are attracted by the idea that society owes them a living, and 
that it can be obtained through the exercise of political power. 
To carry out their task, whole nations have sought to prey upon 
other nations, not only forcing upon them the purchasing of 
their commodities, which is chiefly an oriental pastime, but 
demanding the possession of their resources and tribute to 
make those resources available. Internally, these tendencies 
take the form of Socialism; externally, the form of Inter- 
nationalism — a form of Internationalism of a socialistic as 
opposed to a juristic type. 



ADDRESS OF HON. DAVID JAYNE HILL 19 

The sophisms that underlie these tendencies are as seduc- 
tive as they are dangerous. They claim a moral character 
>vhich they do not really possess, appealing at first to a spirit 
of generosity and benevolence, but ending by the imposition of 
exorbitant demands, in the name of pretended justice, which 
is often so bold as to ridicule mere voluntary personal charity; 
and that beautiful grace of the New Testament is represented 
as a mere refuge from a wider responsibility. 

In truth, the word "responsibility" has almost lost its 
primitive and normal meaning. Socialism makes the indus- 
trious and the provident responsible for the idle and the pro- 
fligate, and goes to the length of holding the virtuous accoun- 
table for the existence of crime. By destroying the individual 
for the benefit of society, it annihilates the right of the only 
units that possess any moral consciousness, or have any moral 
(juality, — individual men and women — and converts the whole 
conception of morality, which is grounded upon free person- 
ality, or else it has no ground at all, into terms of mechanism 
and statistical equalization of material conditions. Carried to 
its logical result, it would wholly dry up the foundation of per- 
sonal initiative, and make every man, and woman and child in 
^he community a pensioner of the State, regardless of merit, 
service, or capacity. (Applause). 

I shall detain you but a moment more. The pivot upon 
which this social mechanism revolves is the power of unlimit- 
ed taxation, a power which the founders of this nation care- 
fully refused to grant to government. It would take from 
those who have and distribute to those who have not, on the 
ground that private possession is a wrong done to society, and 
that need is the true and only measure of demand. 

More than forty years ago, old John Ruskin, one of the 
most notable social reformers in his time, had the courage 
to say: "There is nothing really more monstrous in any re- 
corded savagery or absurdity of mankind, than that govern- 
ments should be able to get money for any folly they choose to 
commit, by selling the right of taxing future generations to 
the end of time." Today, they not only do this, but they do 
not wait for the future generations. (Laughter). They take 



20 ADDRESS OF HON. DAVID JAYNE HILL 

what they please, and they spend it as they like. And in this 
country, a very few hundred men can do that, regardless of 
the obligations they have already incurred and imposed on the 
future. And, when by this process a nation has impoverished 
itself, it turns to any other nation that has any resources left, 
nnd invites it to join in the orgy of prodigality. 

In disturbed world conditions, it is not unnatural to argue 
that, if, in a community, every individual is responsible for 
the condition of all the rest, every nation is responsible 
for the misfortunes of all the others. Misconduct ceases to be a 
criterion of judgment. A universal communism tends to re- 
duce all to the same level, to distribute the wealth and re- 
sources of the world pro rata, irrespective of effort, capacity, 
or desert; and national prudence, like individual thrift, is 
brought under condemnation as a mark of selfishness. 

Now, national duty, like individual duty, is, of course, a 
reality; but duty, whether national or individual, has no other 
sound basis than the reciprocity of rights. We can deter- 
mine our duty in a scientific and reasonable way, only by ask- 
ing ourselves what we might justly demand from others; and, 
in this light, is it not plain that responsibility is not unlimited? 
It does not in reality extend beyond the power to control, in 
some degree, at least, the conduct of those for whom it is 
held that we are responsible. I think it is a defensible maxim, 
that our responsibility as a nation is rightly measured by the 
limitation of our power over other nations. If they will not 
conform to our standards, how can we be held responsible for 
their misfortunes? We cannot suffer them to drag us down 
to ruin by their folly, their jealousies, or their extravagance. 
(Applause) 

It is in connection with this aspect of national duty that 
Washington, in his "Farewell Address", points out the seduc- 
tive nature of what he calls "foreign influence". 

With this, in recent years, we have become familiar in 
the form of what we now call "propaganda"; which, in secrecy, 
subtlety, and perversity, has been developed into a fine art. 
Like ether, it is invisible, and so volatile that an attempt to 



ADDRESS OF HON. DAVID JAYNE HILL 21 

confine or imprison it only gives it a wider diffusion; and the 
more we absorb of it, the more unconscious we are of its ex- 
istence, as it gently puts us to sleep and obliterates the use 
of our senses. (Applause) And what is most alarming of all 
is, that it often emanates from sources that are so respectable 
that they never awaken our suspicion. 

It was against this peril, more menacing to our national 
life, believe me, more menacing to our national life than ad- 
vancing armies, that Washington wrote: "Against the in- 
sidious wiles of foreign influence, I conjure you to believe me, 
fellow-citizens, the jealousy of a free people ought to be con- 
stantly awake; since history and experience prove, that foreign 
influence is one of the most baneful foes of republican govern- 
ment. But that jealousy, to be useful, must be impartial, else 
it becomes the instrument of the very influence to be avoided, 
instead of a defense against it. Excessive partiality for one 
foreign nation, and excessive dislike of another, cause those 
whom they actuate to see danger only on one side, and serve 
to veil, and even to second, the arts of influence on the other. 
Real patriots, who may resist the intrigues of the favorite 
are likely to become suspected and odious; while the tools and 
dupes usurp the applause and confidence of the people, to sur- 
render their interests." 

When we seriously inquire — and that is the principal 
thing — what will most effiectively safeguard our heri- 
tage from foes within and enemies without, we ask a ques- 
tion very difficult to answer. There was a time when I looked 
most hopefully to our universities and colleges, but foreign 
influences which have crept in during the last few decades 
greatly diminish confidence. So many of our teachers, even of 
the highest grade, seem almost ashamed of American provin- 
cialism. They prefer, very much, to follow the foreign ex- 
amples and to display their learning acquired in foreign uni- 
versities. At times, there seems to be hope in the fidelity of 
a political party, faithful to our best national traditions; but 
a personal interest in novelties and class-demands, on the part 
of office-seekers, qualifies this expectation. A free press once 
promised to be an effective guardian of liberty, and the power 



22 ADDRESS OF HON. DAVID JAYNE HILL 

of the press is, of course, not to be questioned as a power; but 
it is at present controlled, in part, by influences that are wholly 
subversive of our constitutional government, and some of this 
power is under the direction of foreign intrigue. I conclude, 
therefore, that now, as always, the real bulwark of our system 
is the intelligence and the virtue of the citizen. If they fail, 
the whole edifice will fall in ruins. 

Happily, the safety of the nation still rests in their hands. 
It was between the trials and perils of the battlefield and the 
arduous tasks of the Presidency, that Washington, in retire- 
ment from public office at Mount Vernon, found the most fruit- 
ful years of contemplation and reflection; when, as a mere 
citizen, he thought of the dangers to the Republic, and how to 
avert them, while he watched the ceaseless flow of the shining 
river on its never-ending journey to the sea; — the symbol of 
our national life that never rests, but hurries ever on to the 
fulfillment of its destiny. Out of that solitude and those mo- 
ments of deep anxiety, came the great constructive thoughts 
embodied in our political edifice, — thoughts that still live on in 
the nation. It is our privilege to perpetuate them, to apply 
them, and to defend them. And to be, with Washington, an 
American citizen, is a nobler privilege than to wear a crown. 
(Prolonged applause). 









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